‘Protected them to death’: Elder-care COVID rules under fire

That makes crafts, bingo, music — “a lot of what nursing home life is about” — more difficult, said Elizabeth Weingast, vice president for clinical excellence at The New Jewish Home, which runs elder-care facilities in and around New York City.

“We prioritized vaccinating nursing home residents and that’s wonderful, but they’re not getting the same liberties that you or I have now,” said Weingast, who recently published an opinion piece calling for a loosening of restrictions.

Her co-author, Karen Lipson of LeadingAge New York, which represents nonprofit nursing homes, said the rules “force this kind of policing of love that is really, really challenging.”

With the virus infecting more than 650,000 long-term-care residents and killing more than 130,000 across the U.S., nursing homes had a duty to take precautions when COVID-19 was out of control, said Nancy Kass, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins University. But she said she is baffled by the continued heavy emphasis on safety at the expense of residents’ quality of life, given “we’re not in that state of affairs anymore.”

In Ohio, Bob Greve was desperate for a change of scenery after being cooped up in his Cincinnati-area nursing home for most of the last year. But the administrator wouldn’t permit a visit to his son’s house because of COVID-19 concerns — even though both men are fully vaccinated.